Arikan Sends Letter to Speaker After Heated Floor Exchange

Del. Lauren Arikan (District 7B Harford County) had a heated floor exchange on Tuesday with House of Delegates Speaker of the House Joseline Peña-Melnyk over HB 444.

Ariken responded today with a letter she sent to Peña-Melnyk’s office. The following letter is below:

Madame Speaker,
I write today to share with you that while I do not take personal offense at your mistreatment of me on the floor yesterday, I do take offense on behalf of the more than 43,000 residents of Maryland whose voices I speak for.

As I was speaking on third reader about ICE Detention Centers on a bill about ICE and immigration, you repeatedly cut me off claiming I was not “on the bill.” ICE Detention is absolutely germane to the debate on HB444, albeit clearly embarrassing for Democrat House members, as they are solely responsible for those conditions due to 2021’s Dignity Not Detention bill.

In fact, several Democrat members, including Delegate Martinez, specifically complained about the conditions in Baltimore City ICE Detention and used those complaints as justification to remove not only the 287g program, but to remove our only Republican representative-Congressman Andy Harris.
Following your attempts to silence me, I decided to review the third reader comments made the previous day on HB 488, so that I could try to understand your justification for cutting me off.

Your explanation was that Delegate Wilson was given wide-latitude to speak on unrelated topics because he was the “floor leader” on the redistricting bill and so that was very “different.”

In reviewing the previous days’ speeches, the following topics were considered by you to be appropriate for third reader debate- requiring no interjection from you to remind them to “stay on the bill.” For a bill about redistricting a congressional map, so long as you are a Democrat, the following topics were considered acceptable to you:

1. Donald Trump- Discussed at length by Del. Wilson, floor leader
2. Healthcare deductibles and poverty- Del. Cullison
3. SNAP, Medicaid/Medicare, Social Security benefits- Del. Shetty
4. Education- Del. Pasteur
5. Renewables and Climate Change- Del. Boyce
6. Black Businesses- Del. Phillips
7. Project 2025 and Women’s Equality- Del. Jones
8. LGBTQ issues- Del. Fair
9. DEI policies- Del. Ruff
10. Immigration and ICE- Del. Martinez

None of the above topics appear anywhere in the text of HB 488. The mental gymnastics required to claim with one breath that all of those speeches by Democrats were on the bill and
with the next breath tell me that my comments in regards to immigration detentions centers on a bill about immigration are not – is Olympic-quality mental gymnastics.

In your speech on the first day of session, you stated the following: “I Believe deeply in my core, Minority Leader, that each and every one of you matters and the people who you represent, who choose you to be their voices, they matter too.”

The more than 43,000 people I represent saw through your actions yesterday exactly how much they matter to you. It was sad for them to watch how you treated me on the floor as you attempted to shut down overtly on topic debate.

While you have the right, per the House Rules, to silence whomever you choose, it is unfortunate that just weeks into your tenure as Speaker of the House of Delegates that your own words already ring hollow.